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Got to mess with the bees today and did my first OAV treatment!

Temps were 60's and sunny, bees were flying and bringing in pollen and nectar, great day in the bee yard!! I removed the SBB and put the double deeps on two hive pallets I made that have solid bottom boards. I also used my Heilyser vaporizer for the first time and it was easy to say the least!! Will do a couple more treatments a week apart and will also pull a hive and look at the bottom board probably Sunday and see what kind of mite drop I got!

After the treatment I decided to mess around since I had an hour to kill before going to a funeral so I started grabbing bees with my fingers for practice on grabbing queens, and it is safe to say I didn't harm a bee or get stung although they were trying like heck!!

Now, for the questions!

I left the vaporizer burning for one minute, got a clean burn off, and pulled the vaporizer out and sealed back up for 10 minutes each hive. I also noticed upon peering in through the entrance that there were OA "icicles" hanging from one frame bottom that was directly over the OA vaporizer, is this normal??

Re: Got to mess with the bees today and did my first OAV treatment!

BG,
It is possible that some of the OA bubbled up and cooled on the frame instead of vaporizing in the pan, however I have not seen this with my hives. I did notice that the weight of the electric wire can pull down on the handle of the vaporizer thus lifting the pan up to contact the frames, perhaps this is what happened, if so you will need to take measures to correct this.

Re: Got to mess with the bees today and did my first OAV treatment!

Thanks Bill! I also noticed that not a ton of vapor was coming out of the entrance when I removed the vaporizer, then again, I don't know how much vapor is suppose to stick around? Im going to take an empty hive out to my in-laws complete with frames and put some clear plastic over the top instead of a lid and see how the vaporizer looks from the top.

Ive looked at the fatbeemans video on youtube and it seemed to be quite a bit of vapor coming from the hive?

Re: Got to mess with the bees today and did my first OAV treatment!

When I vaporize my hives I see very little vapor escape, at most sometimes a small amount will seep out from a crack between the boxes. I seal up the entrance when the Heilyser is energized and this keeps most of the vapors in. I am glad to hear that you are doing well with the unit .

Re: Got to mess with the bees today and did my first OAV treatment!

Thanks again Bill! Ya, I really like the unit, can't wait to check the results on Sunday! I put the vaporizer in the entrance to about half way into the hive and made sure that it was sitting on the bottom flat, then stuffed a rag into the entrance and sealed things up, crossing my fingers it works!

Re: Got to mess with the bees today and did my first OAV treatment!

It's normal to sometimes see crystals inside the hive after vaporizing. The bees clean it up fairly quickly.

The vapor settles inside the boxes pretty fast when you vaporize. Sometimes it seems like it may not be working correctly when there is so little vapor actually seen. Try a test run with the vaporizer sitting somewhere outside the hive. You will see just how much vapor is produced. Makes you wonder where it all goes when you treat the colony.